Excellent Piece By Larry.

Larry asks important question:

Let me start with a simple analogy. You are tooling down the road on a BMW S1000RR “crotch rocket” at 100 miles per hour. You see Toyota sedan a couple of hundred yards (i.e., 183 meters) ahead with an elderly codger at the helm getting ready to pull out into traffic. Do you think it matters if he sees you? Damn right it does. If he pulls out in front of you a collision is inevitable unless you dump the bike, which means you will skip along the pavement like flat rock flung over a still body of water. Or, you’ll hit the car and be launched into low orbit and wind up as bloody pulp. Neither is pleasant to contemplate. It would be nice to know what he is thinking, right? So do you think it matters if the United States correctly understands what the leaders of Russia and China are thinking? And, conversely, does it matter if the leaders of Russia and China correctly discern the intentions of U.S. leaders? The answer–YES on both counts.

Read this excellent piece at Larry's blog. It is this ever important issue of situational (I know where my enemy is) and tactical (I know what my enemy is going to do) awareness which is applicable not just to war but to human activity as a whole. That is why also intelligence craft exists from good ol' human spies to space-based ISR assets. 

It goes without saying that the United States lacks understanding of her "enemies" completely. And it is dangerous, as Larry concludes:

We face a comparable dilemma in the breakdown of communication between Washington and Beijing. False assumptions reinforced by wrong conclusions almost inevitably lead to a deadly miscalculation. Normally, the national intelligence agencies of a nation are supposed to provide a dose of truth and reality. That is the real danger facing America now. The CIA and the FBI are politically compromised and are institutionally averse to telling the President and his team they are wrong. While I no longer have access to current U.S. intelligence, I still hear things through the grapevine of former colleagues and the news is unsettling. There was a time when there were “Dutch Uncles” in the CIA. A “Dutch Uncle” is one who admonishes sternly and bluntly for the benefit of the recipient. Instead of a Dutch Uncle, the intelligence community is behaving more like Wormtongue, a rogue villain in Lord of the Rings. A dangerous situation when our leaders need to understand correctly what the other “guys” think.

Should have the United States known what they were dealing with in terms of Russia in 2014, there would have been a higher probability of this Ukrainian clusterfuck being avoided. But they seem to never learn, and now, they face a complete military and political disaster and a crashing defeat of their "plans", which have been nothing more than practical "sublimation" of the delusions, ignorance and incompetence of people who conceived them. As Mark Chapman, in one of the most hilarious hyperbole I read in years, noted when talking about a particular BSer, who do populate plans-making circles in the West:

The foregoing considered, it will not surprise you, then, that I would be as likely to eat soup made from boiling turnips and Boris Johnson’s bicycle seat as I would be to pay attention to further gobbling from Lucasville.

That's the only way of dealing with people, who, as Larry puts it, do not get that: It Is Critical to Understand What the Other “guy” Thinks.

Upcoming Finalization.

For the Eastern Cauldron of VSU and remaining Nazi elements. Eduard Basurin is eloquent:  for VSU artillery people it is better not to surrender and commit suicide while they can (in Russian). 

He also added that now any 404 military in Mariupol who have been "pocketed" into the Azov Steel plant no humanitarian corridors will be offered out of Mariupol and that means physical annihilation and war crimes tribunal for those who will survive (in Russian). Most will not. Increasing number of reports from different sources confirm the fact that remaining "forces" of Azov and VSU are constantly high and under the influence of hard drugs, including heroin and other "cocktails" one shoots into veins. So, it is just the matter of method of how to finish those remnants off and if anything is worth saving at Azov Steel plant. We'll know soon enough. 

Now to Tucker.
 

The issue he raises is not that it is, indeed, insulting for a country which loves to present itself as the best thing ever, but is that of a paralysis of the American governance due to a complete degeneracy of the elites. As I am on record, getting elected (and re-elected) has nothing to do with real governance on the national level--I assert this for years and the record of the so called Western (and American) "governance" supports my assertions. The most disturbing in all that is the fact apart from purging the best and most capable from government structures, it is a complete inability to process and internalize whatever the last bits of reliable data are provided. 

Some may say (and many do) that, oh, but providing "good data" isn't it "empowering" the enemy? Sure, but this does not apply in the US case since in normal governing bodies, should, what I write about (which, BTW, is not intel, it is all in the open) Russia and modern geopolitics, have been internalized, the only course the United States would have had in this case would be to tone down a BS, seek good accommodation with Russia and see how the US can benefit from it. This is what normal governing bodies do, but not in the US whose "elites", as I already stated not for once, cannot find their own ass with both hands in a brightly lit room. They just do not have faculties to get it, and they double-down with suicidal so called "policies", while having no situational awareness whatsoever. Those who do, they are purged and silenced, otherwise--you get General Keane and ISW, or Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken as an Exhibit A. So, it is not "insulting", it is suicidal and, in some cases, homicidal. Albeit the media shitstorm, after Biden calling for regime change in Russia, in the US MSM gives at least some hope that those cretins didn't lose the self-preservation instinct completely, and this is a good thing. 

Now the "thing" is coming:

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov indicated on Wednesday that all of the nation's energy and commodity exports could be priced in rubles. Moscow has already demanded that gas exports to hostile countries should be paid for in the Russian currency. Peskov was asked about the comments by parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who earlier in the day called for pricing all of Russian commodity exports in domestic currency. “This is an idea that should definitely be worked on,” the Kremlin spokesman said. According to Peskov, the US dollar’s role as a global reserve currency had already taken a hit and a move to pricing Russia’s biggest exports in rubles would be “in our interests and the interests of our partners.”

I am not going to wax "economical" here, not exactly my shtick anyway, but  even ever critical of Kremlin Paul Craig Roberts had to admit:

These are major developments with many large implications.  The World Economic Forum’s “reset” has likely been replaced by a Russian-Chinese reset. 

This is what real physical economy of enclosed technological cycles and real military power give you--you can always reset the "resetters". I need to write something on Russian commercial aviation, some really interesting and cool developments are taking place there. It is especially important against the background of a terrifying tragedy of the China Eastern Boeing 737-800 crash. Can it be the case of the repeat of 737s known problem of the rudder being stuck? Remember Pittsburgh US Air flight 427?  And while at it, wait for revelations regarding MH17 Flight which are coming. Wonder why the US wanted to blame LDNR for that? War Crimes Tribunal will provide a real investigation and results. Where US and UK supplied Stingers and Starstreaks, in what hands, will they end up? Questions, questions...

Nicholas Gvosdev Loses The Nerve.

As I wrote not for once, I stopped treating American geopolitical theorists as serious scholars a long time ago. Most of what passes in contemporary US as a "national security studies" is a pseudo-academic sophistry revolving around the United States as one and only "best thing ever" which ever happened or will ever happen to humanity. The only work, as in set of the ideas, which came out of the US and which still has some relation, however limited, to reality is Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations, and even this influential work turned out to be filled with misconceptions, pop-history and all other traits of what is commonly known as Political Science. In general, contemporary American geopolitical  "thought" is still defined by Fukuyama's scandalously stupid and delusional, to put it politely,  failure of The End of History. 

Most taxonomies of the American geopolitical thought, such as realists, neo-realists, neocons, liberal interventionists, globalists, you name it, make absolutely no sense since do not realistically describe American doctrine-mongering in any sensible way. There is very little difference between, say John Mearsheimer, who passes in US as "offensive realist" or whatever is hip and cool any given day, and, say Robert Kagan, who is a certifiable war-monger and pseudo-academic. Views of both originate from the same starting point and differ only in minute details. This starting point is American exceptionalism and strong belief that US is economically and militarily omnipotent. Enter Nicholas Gvosdev, whose bio, apart from naming some of his places of employment, including him being "professor" of national security studies in Naval War College, is rather foggy. For years this guy presented himself as a geopolitical "realist" (or whatever) but lately he finally dropped this BS mask and exposed himself for what he is--a classic American exceptionalist who has very little grasp of the subject of his "study" (evidently he has his Ph.D in it)--Russia. 

The issue here is not a complete mental breakdown in Gvosdev's latest piece in, where else, The National Interest, no, the issue is, as it is an overwhelming case with US "academe", a loss of any touch with the reality. I wrote a lot on this issue and not for once I stated that people in US who write on Russia's economy should really abstain from regurgitation of therapeutic self-medicating ignorant mantras on Russia's economy since they will spare their own nerves and avoid parading themselves as amateur fools most of them are. It is not enough that most of American "economists" continue to live in a delusion, such as former Reagan's budget director David Stockman:

 

And as for Russia, pulleese!

Its entire GDP of $1.5 trillion is less than that of the New York metro area, and only 8% of the US economy as a whole. The very idea that it’s a military threat to America is just flat out ludicrous; and that is in no way changed by Putin’s recent hints that Russia has developed a new class of non-ballistic strategic weapons that are not vulnerable to US ABM defenses.

Being an ignorant hack on Russia he certainly doesn't understand how actual economy (I will omit here his total ignorance on any military-technological issue) works and measured but that is expected from the former Wall Street shyster whose understanding of any serious industry is limited by methodology of fraud. For a man with degree in....theology, among many other "useful" backgrounds he boasts, it is expected not to have understanding of basic mathematics. Enter Gvosdev, who teaches, among many other things, Economic Geography. So, unlike ignorant Stockman, in his nervous-breakdown manifesto he comes up with a new wet-dream  "measure" of Russia's economic "weakness". Get this: 

It’s time to part with illusions. For too long, the U.S. national-security community has oscillated in its assessment of the Russian Federation, swinging between viewing Moscow as the country’s number one geopolitical threat to dismissing the challenge of a nation whose per capita GDP equals that of Portugal.

 

Initially when I read this I was startled. I thought Gvosdev followed Stockman's method of comparing NYC "economy", most of it based on Wall Street speculations with snake oil and air, to Russia's, but then I read "per capita". A-ha, I thought, Gvosdev is certainly smarter than so many of his Russia's "expert" colleagues who continue to spread various economic BS about Russia. The reason for this thought was simple--indeed, current Russia's GDP per capita is somewhere in the vicinity of Portugal's which, if Gvosdev didn't know is not the richest but by far not the poorest nation in the European Union with surprisingly robust economy for such a small country. The question thus is this: how Russia's per capita GDP, which only fifteen years ago was in her death throes and had a completely destroyed economy and livelihood of tens of millions of Russians, is bad?  If anything, Russia's per capita GDP was growing steadily and this comparison with Portugal far from reinforcing Gvosdev's thesis of Russia's economy being weak, actually debunks it. 

Nor Gvosdev's statement such as this:

The second illusion is that Russia’s trend lines are negative. This is true—with predictions about Russia’s relative economic size and military power by 2050 showing radical diminishment.   

has anything to do with reality, especially projected against the background of US being now at the precipice of economic and military global irrelevance. But, Gvosdev's piece is just another one in a non-stop hysterical reaction in the US on own and accelerating departure from, largely self-proclaimed, omnipotence. Russia has become an ultimate enemy and it seems that always weak US "academe" awareness of Russia is either completely lost or is reduced to a set of irrational reactions based only on emotions. These are the signs of a mental breakdown and are the heralds of a collapse, no, not Russia's. Desperation always drives increased illusions of own omnipotence and disregard of reality. It is one of the manifestations of one of (which one is for you to decide) the stages of Kubler-Ross Grief Model.  Saker thinks that these are first two stages simultaneously--I agree. These are now denial and anger, with bargaining, depression and acceptance coming at some point of time and, hopefully, without anyone in US deciding to do the unthinkable thus taking human civilization as a factor out of the history of our rather small planet. Pseudo "academic" exercises such as Gvosdev's piece or Stockman's pretentious ignorance are not helping in containing a massive geopolitical turbulence which we all are facing now. I will omit elaborating on political points here completely: I said many times, I will repeat it--American "Russian Studies" field is a sewer.